فصلنامه برنامه ریزی و بودجه
پیاپی 113 (تابستان 1390)

Mainstream economics, while opposing philosophical and methodological issues, is based on its own specific methodological principles. In fact, all the scientific endeavors undertaken in the framework of this intellectual tradition with the aim of getting access to recognition and knowledge are acceptable merely within the boundaries of its own methodology; yet the question arises whether the methodological foundations of mainstream economics would lead to reality-based analysis of economic phenomena. Would it be able to meet the goals of mainstream economists? This study tries to answer these questions through the use of textual analysis and demonstrates that methodology of mainstream economics suffers from two essential shortcomings in two levels, i.e. technical and metaphysical, including the contradiction between epistemology and methodology in a way that it may not be considered as a proper base for conducting economic researches.

The purpose of this study is to improve Iran's budgeting system and it was conducted on the basis of the literature related to policy making. It tries to pinpoint the factors affecting the deployment of performance budgeting in the governmental bodies. This research is an applied one (from the purpose point of view), a descriptive one (from the nature viewpoint), and an exploratory one (as far as statistical analysis is concerned). It was conducted as a field research. The statistical population of the research is composed of budgeting experts in the governmental/executive bodies. Considering the research literature as well as the standpoints of various scholars, the factors affecting performance budgeting deployment were discovered and categorized in 30 variables. Later, every variable was supplemented with some questions and a questionnaire was made including 137 question items. Reliability of the questionnaire was 0.96330 according to Cronbach alpha test. Factor analysis test of the research variables determined the following factors according to priority: 1. paying attention to culture and leadership, 2. commitment to execution, 3. target group's terms and conditions, 4. considering knowledge and structure, 5. law-making conditions, 6. considering administrator's interests and organizational atmosphere, 7. considering skimpiness of laws and technologies.

Earnings quality is an effective factor in determining the level of cash holdings in corporations. Some researches indicate that increase in accounting information quality leads to decrease cash holdings. Therefore the main goal of this paper is to review the relationship between earnings quality as independent variable and cash holdings as dependent variable in Tehran Stock Exchange. The other control variables in this research are growth opportunities, firm size, the structure of liabilities maturity, relation with financial institutes, opportunity cost of investment in cash assets, firm leverage, other cash assets, the capacity of producing cash flow, percentage of dividend payout, rate of investment in fixed assets on net of fixed assets at the first of the term, age of the firm and business group membership. Therefore 150 firms that their required data for a ten year period (2000-2009) was available were studied. The multivariate pooled regression model is used to examine the hypotheses. The conclusions indicate that there is a negative and significant relationship between earnings quality and cash holdings in Tehran Stock Exchange. The conclusions indicate that about 85 percent of changes in the level of cash holdings explained with changes in variables used in research model

Regional development, regional policies execution and decreasing imbalances have always been the challenges of governments during the last two decades. One could refer to the inequalities of labor markets among different regions of the country in the development plans performance. One of the goals of the 4th development plan (2005 - 2009) was to decrease the difference between the highest and lowest rate of unemployment among the provinces to 5.5 percent in the end of the plan. This research tries to survey and precisely measure the changes of regional inequalities between two outstanding indicators of labor market, i.e. unemployment rate and labor participation rates, in 30 provinces of Iran within the 4th development plan, using regional inequality measures. The results show that according to official statistics, the gap between the highest and lowest unemployment rates among provinces in the end of the plan was 12.6 percent while that of the labor participation rates was 16.2 percent. Taking the inequality indicators into consideration, it should be mentioned that unemployment rate inequality among the regions have relatively decreased, but contrary to expectations, labor participation rate has increased. Meanwhile in the 4th development plan, inequalities trend of two regionally important indicators of labor market has been the reverse of national level.

This article tries to survey and compare poverty intensity trend in Iran, using poverty intensity index estimates. Additive decomposability is one of the privileges of poverty intensity index. It would be possible to calculate the percentage of changes in the poverty intensity in the forms of the addition results of poverty rate percentage changes, average poverty gap ratio, and Gini coefficient of poverty gap ratios. The results of poverty intensity calculation in Iran indicate that urban and rural poverty intensity trends follow the same behavioral model. Moreover, poverty intensity comparison demonstrates a better welfare status in the villages during the whole period. Poverty rate factor is the most effective one in the poverty intensity trend. Yet poverty gap changes should also be taken into consideration in order to explain the poverty intensity behavior. The impact of Gini coefficient of poverty gap ratios is very little.

Government’s financial expenditures have an outstanding effect on the private sector’s investment and they are regarded as a powerful tool for the growth and economic stability policies. This article tries to study the effects of government’s financial expenditures (current and capital expenditures as well as budget deficit) on private investment in Iran on the basis of crowding out effect hypothesis, using vector auto regression methods and error correction model within 1971 - 2008 The results demonstrate that the increase in government’s current expenditures causes crowding-out effect on private investments while increasing governments investment expenditures and governmental investments in the infrastructures have crowding-in effect on private investments. Meanwhile according to the results of the study, budget deficit has negative impact on private investments in Iran. Eventually the general result of the study holds that financial discipline in current expenditures and public investment development could strengthen private investments.

Competitiveness index presented by World Economic Forum in the Framework of three factors, i.e. basic requirements, efficiency, and innovation indicates that as far as the “basic requirements” factor is concerned, Iran enjoys a relatively better status than other countries considered in the study though some of these requirements, namely basic education and health are less influential in efficiency and innovation. Studying the points gained on three factors of basic requirements, efficiency, and innovation was indicative of Iran’s weakness in competitive advantage. Given the influential macroeconomic variables, analyzing the competitive advantage as well as the competitive strengths and weaknesses of Iran and other regional countries indicates that efficiency is crucial factor to increase competitiveness. Therefore the results demonstrate that Iran’s priorities to enhance competitiveness with the aim of meeting the goals of 20-year vision plan would be as follows: efficiency of supporting and competitive policies, reforming laws and procedures of labor market, financial markets development, paying attention to inflation effects of policies, using capacities of existing laws and reforming them in the domain of intellectual property and foreign investment, enhancing supervision and evaluation powers, and finally reforming the present standards.